


A Routine Not Uninterrupted.

by orphan_account



Series: A Story not Untold. [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 08:38:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3803941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Severus Snape is nothing if not a man of routine, which only goes to say without his routine, he's nothing.</p><p>-<br/>In the same world as 'A Boy Not Uncracked' and 'A Man Not Unkind.'<br/>Could be read alone? maybe?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This one is a little harder to read alone so uhm- tiny synopsis of the other two?
> 
> 'A Man Not Unkind'- After the war Harry can't make the bad go away, so he fucks and fights and gets high until one day Severus kidnaps him in an unplanned attempt to help or at least get an explanation for the man's behavior. After much fuss, Harry reveals the pain he can't handle, but refuses to let Severus speak because he's pretending the man is someone else. someone kind.  
> Severus allows him this.
> 
> A Boy Not Uncracked- Potter can only sleep with someone touching him and Severus sometimes forgets he has a voice at all, he spends so much time pretending to be the man that Potter pretends he is as well. Some days, this kindness is less a lie than others, and sometimes there is no kindness at all- like when he throws Potter out for showing up drunk again. The man comes back the next day and puts his foot down. Severus isn't allowed to kick him out anymore and he doesn't get to call him Potter anymore.
> 
>  
> 
> and uh.....  
> now this.  
> Timeline wise- roughly sketching the time out to be that A boy not uncracked takes place a few months after A Man Not Unkind and this one takes place a year or so later. the previous two focused on Harry's PTSD.... this one not so much.

Severus isn't sure what he's supposed to do, this isn't a situation he'd expected or prepared for or even vaguely thought possible.

At least, not recently. Not now, not when everything had been going so well, when he'd finally been settling back into his routine, when the Boy seemed to be doing so much better.

The Potion's master tosses and turns in bed all night, tossing on and off the covers a dozen times, closed his eyes only to open them with a start again and again and again. Here in the darkness his thoughts race and he regrets everything.

Regrets taking the boy in. Regrets letting him stay. Regrets not putting a tracking spell on that blasted, insolent, good for nothing, most likely out of his mind terrified twerp.

Every time he starts to drift off there's a creak, or he swears he can feel a dip in the bed or hear the sound of the Boy's heart racing. He does not admit that it is his own heart that is trying to pound it's way out of his chest, there would be no point, not even here, not even now in this darkness, in this merlin forsaken silence.

When the sun shines through the windowsill there is no slow sleepy rouse from the depths,there is no warmth radiating from the places that skin touches skin, there is only the bitter awareness that he has not slept again and that the Boy.... the Boy has not come back. The Boy hasn't come back in three nights now and the longer Severus thinks about this fact the more he can feel ants crawling across his skin and besides, he has a new problem.

He hasn't slept since the Boy left and it is Monday. The shop is supposed to open, he has orders to fill, shelves to stock, customers to help but he can't make himself get up and out of this bed. Part of him can remember that at one point his brain would have been buzzing with solutions, always so busy fitting things together and picking things apart. If this had been earlier he would know what to do quickly, if this had been before, he'd have had no problem getting out of bed. Maybe the Boy was right, maybe he hadn't been happy but that didn't matter. He'd functioned. He'd had a routine.

And with the addition of the Boy, he'd made a new one. It'd been rocky at first, of course. Trying to figure one another out, figure out what worked and what didn't without ever speaking, without ever naming this thing. Whatever it was. He'd still never asked what the Boy wanted to be called, supposed it didn't matter because it wasn't like they ever shared their space with others. Wasn't like he had anyone to talk to, to share stories about the Boy with. The only people he spoke to outside of the Boy were customers and what was he supposed to say, "this morning I woke up to the sun shining and the savior of the wizarding world breathing against my neck and for a moment, everything seemed okay." or "the boy only broke three glasses last week and we haven't had to repair the window in months, this is progress." or better yet "oh this bruise? I spent the better part of my night wrestling with someone who thought I was voldemort for a second, common mistake, no big deal." Anything he could think to say would cause questions or rumors and so instead he sticks to saying nothing. It's better that way.

Severus wants to scream his last name, wants to yell until spittle goes flying, wants to repeat it again and again and again- like a child trying to pick a fight against Mary in the Mirror..... But saying Potter three times will not bring him back.

Severus knows this as surely as he knows that he does not know what will.

In a small fit of something, he isn't sure whether it's genius or desperation, Severus points his wand at the lamp on the bedside table and murmurs a spell. It takes almost half an hour but eventually Severus lays back in bed, fingers lightly stroking soft fur as he drifts off with a weight by his side and the quiet sound of purring. Wakes up to a rough tongue and hums for a second before turning a hair brush and tie into a set of dishes, filling one with augamenti and attempts to transfigure food for the other. It turns out less than perfect if the upturned nose is any indication, but Severus shrugs his regrets to the small animal. He hasn't gotten out of bed except to pee in the past few days and there's no way he can manage to find proper food at a time like this.

Eventually his spelled companion curls back up on the bed and Severus arranges himself around it, careful to not actually touch for fear of scaring it away.  By the second day of pet ownership he's able to force himself out of bed long enough to owl order a package of cat food, as well as a proper litterbox and go down stairs long enough to put a sign on the door of the shop to say that the store is closed until further notice.

With that a new sort of routine begins, sometime before the sun comes up the small animal nudges him until it's let outside and a few hours later it meows at the door until it's allowed back in. On the fifth day, Severus spells the curtains so that the sun doesn't come through at all and lights a single candle on the dresser. What time of day it is doesn't matter, only whether or not the pest needs to be fed or let in or out. 

Severus calls it pest and never names it and pretends this means nothing. Pest for it's part doesn't seem to mind, doesn't mind the darkness, only cares whether or not it has food to eat, though seems especially pleased on the occasions that Severus drags himself to the kitchen to make food of his own. No matter how little he makes, it's always too much and Pest has grown fond of the biscuits and jam that he leaves on the table at these times. 

Most of the time though, most of the time they lay in bed, sometimes touching, sometimes not. The nights he sleeps the best is when Pest curls tightly on his chest, his skin angry and red from the clench of nails that perhaps.... perhaps he should cut.

But he doesn't.

And the routine continues.

He ignores the owls, starts redirecting letters immediately to the fireplace. Now it is the only light in the house, eternal flame there less for it's glow and more for it's power to destroy. But it thinks it helps. If fires could think, Severus takes a heavy breath, wondering when his whole house went under water, wondering when his mind deteriorated enough to start thinking of fire as something that thinks. But then Pest rubs against his leg and Severus laughs a shaky laugh, and he doesn't care. Because even if he can't help... even if he can't help.... it's a road he's not walking down tonight.

No matter what his past, at least, at least he has Pest.

and Pest needs him.

Pest, would literally be nothing without him.

So he takes comfort in this, this and the fire.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The first that thought that occurs to him is that it is cold, too cold.   
The second that it was too bright.   
The one that stops his heart in his chest is that he can't hear or feel Pest.

For the first time in months he jolts out of bed and stumbles towards the living room, suddenly more awake and aware than he has been in what feels like forever. But he stops in the threshold, unsure he can go any further, unsure if he's hallucinating. It wouldn't be out of place, Severus figures, sometimes when he'd come home from meetings his body battered and his mind more shield than thought, he'd see Lily or Madam Pompfrey. Sometimes, sometimes he even saw his mother there in the moments before the darkness encased him. There had been nights when the torture effected more sense of reality than body and he'd come back to hogwarts only to drink and argue with ghosts that always appeared just a little too fuzzy around the edges.

But the Boy is no ghost, and neither is Pest perched on his lap in the kitchen.

"Sorry for the mess, you weren't returning my owls and the shops been closed for what? three months now?"

Three months, Snape blinks then shrugs, the simple act of trying to place time causing his head to pound. It's only at the explicit mention of the mess that he notices the space where the door between his home and the stairwell to the shop is gone, and he can only imagine the state that's in.

Funnily enough, even imagining the front doors blown to bits isn't enough to make him care.

"Snape? Snape? Are you okay?"

No. No he's not.

Because the Boy is in his kitchen and apparently it's been months since he's left his own home, since he's opened the shop, and despite the fact that his shop is most likely in shambles, despite the fact that he doesn't know who, if anyone was able to take the contracts he had with the werewolfs, the school, or the hospital. Doesn't know if he'll be able to get them back if someone else did take the responsibility, doesn't know if he walked downstairs and cleaned the wreckage if it'd be worth putting an open sign on the door.

And all of this, all the worry is like background noise, a fan buzzing in the distance trying to drown out the utter relief that he's alive.

He's alive

The Boy is alive and well, and he doesn't need Severus anymore than Severus needed that fire for light.

and Severus, Severus knows what happens when one isn't needed. He has the scars to bear for that. Now, in the midst of everything, he mentally accounts for each one. Each strike of his fathers belt, just as angry, just as cruel as the wand work from Bella, from Lucius, from Riddle. The scars along his inner thighs, the ones he can't blame on anyone else, from the years under Dumbledore's thumb. Oh, the scars he can't blame on anyone else, but they still all have names. Names like Draco, like Katie Bell, many of them named Pot-

He can't even bear to think the name in his presence anymore, and suddenly the silent room isn't so silent any more but he can't figure out where the sound is coming from. It's only when Pest disappears and the Boy is on his feet, pulling Severus to him that he realizes that the sound, the sound so much like an animal dying, is coming from his own throat.

"Snape, come on, shhhhhh. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay."

Okay for him. Severus had been so worried at first. One day the Boy had been there and then he hadn't. One day he'd just left and the first night, Severus had paced the room wondering when he'd come home and soon after it had begun sinking in that the Boy, the Boy wasn't coming home. And Severus, Severus didn't know why. Didn't know if he'd been kidnapped or if he'd gone on another bender, much less if he was stuck in a hospital or a morgue. But the Boy is Okay. There are no dark circles around his eyes, his frame is no longer as thin.

Severus had thought himself kind, and here was proof that he wasn't, he was just dead weight holding the Boy back. And the Boy, the Boy appears to be waiting for an answer now, but Severus isn't sure he heard the question so he just says

"You left."

The Boy's face contorts for a moment as it finally sinks in that Severus didn't get sick, something didn't happen while he was gone, his leaving was the cause for the closed sign on the door.

"I.... you said I needed help. so I got it. I didn't... I didn't... Snape, I swear I didn't mean to.... I don't understand."

Severus opens his mouth and then closes it, saying nothing as he looks into the distance, trying to focus on anything but the Boy. Abruptly he pushed away, choosing to take a seat in the vacated kitchen, eye set blankly on the table. He just wants to think, wants everything to make sense but everything is swirling and he's not sure he knows how to recognize truth from fiction at the moment.

"Talk to me, Severus. Please? Merlin, please. I didn't know. I don't understand what happened."

Except, he doesn't know what happened either. Doesn't know how to explain what broke inside of him, about the fear or how he didn't act on it because what if the Boy needs to be saved again met what if the Boy doesn't want to be found. How he'd left the house that first weekend and searched the most he could but it wasn't like he could ring up Granger and demand to know if she'd seen him, and besides....

How do you look for someone who has no name?

"No name?" 

It's only when the Boy says that, that Severus realizes he spoke that last part out loud.

"You told me not to call you...... That you weren't..... I didn't know if you were alive or dead or lost or scared or confused..... but how do you find someone when you can't say their name?"

"I tried to owl you. Been trying to owl you. At first I just thought.... you were busy. The full moon was coming up after all and I tried to stop by to see you at work, but it was closed and I though maybe you were sick. But it's been months.. months.... and your store hasn't opened... what have you been doing? and I have a name. I don't understand. I want to understand. What do you mean I don't have a name...."

Silence settles between them again because Severus, Severus can't explain. There's nothing to explain, nothing he can say to make sense of everything. When Pest brushes against his leg he reaches down and pulls the cat into his lap, stroking it idly, focusing on the familiar feel of breathing. It's enough to help clearing his head, and he can almost see the moment that it occurs to the Boy what he's been saying.

"I told you not to call me..... that was months ago, Snape. Months. I was angry and upset and... What have you been referring to me as since then?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Who was I supposed to talk to? I barely spoke in the shop, we spoke even less here. I was just......"

"Just what?" 

"Trying to be kind."

It's such a sad statement, when he says it like that. As if Severus Snape had ever been kind a day in his life. As if the Great Dungeon Bat had a single bone inside of him compatible with the idea of kindness. 

"You were. You were. You were kind. No trying about it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not doing a writing experiment involving all the ways that codependent relationships involving people with PTSD can implode- /you're/ doing a writing experiment involving all the ways that codependent relationships involving people with PTSD can implode.
> 
> Anyway, the previous two pieces focused on Harry and Harry being messed up  
> but I don't think Severus would have escaped the war... or his childhood unscathed. and he always struck me as the type that everything had a place and when that's messed with.....  
> he doesn't do too well.
> 
> but I also wanted to show how taking a care taker position for someone and then something happening- can really fuck with you, especially if you have your own issues. also fixation.
> 
> also I just really like the idea of Harry getting to a more stable place but in moments of panic still causing doors to explode.


End file.
